Stan Lee Would Like a Black Panther Franchise

“Oh I’d be happy if they add the Black Panther and maybe Dr. Strange,” Lee told I Am Rogue during a recent interview. As for which characters he’d like to see get their very own franchise entries, a la “Iron Man”, “Thor” and “The Hulk”: “Those two [Dr. Strange and the Black Panther] and probably Ant-Man, which I think they are working on [Edgar Wright has been indeed been developing a solo Ant-Man flick for several years now]. Maybe I’ll play a little role in that.”

As much as I would love to see this happen, I only would want it to happen if it could be done right. And I’m not sure how Marvel’s formula would handle a black man who’s king of an African empire that’s more technologically advanced than the West, who’s done battle against the Ku Klux Klan and the apartheid regime in South Africa. I got back and forth on this, because I think there’s real value in positive portrayals of powerful black men in our media, but I wonder if a Black Panther movie that’s barred from talking about race would be worse than no Black Panther at all.